I am SO full. We just finished a really good dinner of edamame (seriously, my new favorite veggie) and Asian stir-fry noodle stuff. I always concoct my own sauce out of various ingredients I have on hand, like sesame oil, soy sauce, teriyaki, honey, etc., and today I threw in some red chili paste with a little too much gusto. It was CRAZY spicy. I think I drank four glasses of water during dinner, which has obviously added to my feeling of fullness. But it was really good anyway. Jack's a big fan of peanut sauce, so I think next time I might try throwing some peanut butter into the mix and seeing how it turns out (that's what Bobby Flay and the other Food Network foodies do, so I'm thinking it'll work).

We went out to lunch and then to a play with a small group of people from church today, and it was a nice afternoon. At lunch, all the women were telling us about their birthing experiences in BR (mostly negative experiences, but ten to fifteen years ago and thankfully not at our hospital), and we were telling them about our Lamaze class and how things had been going so far. One of the women in particular has been really supportive and sweet, always asking me how things are going, etc., and she's coming to my baby shower in a few weeks. It's been neat to get to know the moms at church even better since I've gotten pregnant, not only drawing on their collective wisdom but also hearing some really funny stories about their kids. I absolutely love our church.

The play we saw, called Cocktail, was engrossing and inspiring, and I'm so glad that we went. It's about Dr. Krisana Kraisintu, a Thai scientist who was responsible for manufacturing a generic HIV drug cocktail in Thailand despite her country's intellectual-property agreements with the U.S., which almost prevented her success. Before she took on the mammoth task of manufacturing this cocktail, the only option was AZT, which almost no one in Thailand could afford. After she worked tirelessly in Thailand and had perfected her drug cocktail, then saw to its distribution at the hands of Doctors Without Borders and other groups, she went to the DRC to do the same thing (and might still be there, actually — the timeline of this play only went through 2005, so I'm not sure). The production was fantastic, portraying the chilling rise of the AIDS epidemic in Thailand in the 80s and early 90s with a really cool montage, politicians' reluctance to get involved, and Kraisintu's eventual triumph in being able to help thousands of Thai and then thousands of Africans. It was an incredible play.

Now, I'm grading and preparing for finals week, since I'm giving exams tomorrow, Tuesday, and Thursday, and I foolishly hope to have all (most?) of the students' end-of-semester work back to them by the time they take their exams. Yeah, we'll see.

Labels: belly, church, friends, kitchen adventures, school

• posted by erica 5/06/2007 09:41:00 PM
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